LAURA MARLING PAGES -- last updated 5 March 2018

SEMPER FEMINA

A Deluxe Edition of Marling's sixth album, SEMPER FEMINA. is now available on CD from
Amazon (currently out of stock in the US) and as a download from iTunes. It adds recordings captured at the live debut of the album,
at Martyrs’, Chicago, where Laura and band performed the record in full. It can also be streamed on Spotify.
Here is the SEMPER FEMINA tracklist:

Semper Femina is an excerpt from a verse by the roman poet Virgil: varium et mutabile semper femina.
"Woman's a various and a changeful thing." (John Dryden's translation) Shortened to semper femina, it means "Always a woman".

MARLING AND FASHION SHOOTS

Marling talked about a wide range of subjects with Kim Hillyard of
The Line of Best Fit, including Marling's re-evaluation of her
portrayal as an artist. "I don't do fashion shoots or have my make-up done because I think that is not the point of me," Marling said.
"It's a very respectable point of some people, but not me, but as a result of that, I've sort of felt like I've had to leave my sexuality
behind in my career...It's not a huge part of my private persona but it is a part of it and it's so weird that it's not a part at all
of my public persona."

ASHVILLE SETLIST

The setlist from Marling's Asheville, N.C. show last year (on right) shows tentative titles for some of the songs on the new album
(Semper Femina): THE VALLEY, NEXT TIME, WILD (which became Wild Once?), SOOTHING, ATW (Always This Way?), NOTHING NOT NEARLY, WILD FIRE,
NOUEL, and DPMB (Don't Pass Me By). It seems that TENNESSEE did not make it into the album.

An explanation of NOEUL -- Justin Tyler Close, who photographed Marling for Lab Magazine, has been
and currently is working with Los Angeles mixed-media artist Noeul Riel,
and Marling has posted some of that work on Instagram.

TATTOOS

Laura Marling has three tattoos. The most recently acquired is semper femina on her upper left thigh. On the inside of her
left wrist is the Marling family crest, and on her right wrist isthe family motto: We Are Prey To None. These were described
by interviewer Tony Clayton-Lea in The Irish Times.
On right is a photo of the semper femina tattoo (enlarged in inset). The photo is by
Hollie Fernando.

KAREN ELSON - DISTANT SHORE

Distant Shore, the first track released form Karen Elson's next
album, DOUBLE ROSES, features Laura Marling on backing vocals. The album was released in April 2017 and is
available from Amazon.

ZEPPELIN COVER

Led Zeppelin is reissuing all of their albums to celebrate their 40th anniversary. To help commemorate the re-reissue of
Physical Graffiti, MOJO releaseed a tribute disc in the spring of 2015, on which a host of contemporary acts recreate the entire
record in a series of bold and original cover versions. Laura Marling contributed a cover of Bron-Yr-Aur to it. The two-disc vinyl
set was limited to about 5,000 copies. (Video of Marling's cover is available
on YouTube)

The J Files - 2015

Karen Leng interviewed Laura Marling for episode 95 of
Double J Radio. Marling
spoke of, among other things, her early days in London. "When I was 16 years of age," she said, "I began playing at a football
club bar for these underage nights. I used to get the train up with my friends from Reading and end up in a place called Brentford.
Around that time it was me, The Mystery Jets, Adele and, most importantly to me, a guy called Jamie T. He very kindly took a very
shy, awkward, young Laura off on tour with him, which resulted in me being signed to his label. I'm still very grateful to him."
The episode is no longer available on Soundcloud, but can be downloaded from iTunes.

COVER OF THE MONTH

The Laura Marling Cover the month (February) is by Szczuka Panka from Pomáz, Hungary.

MARLING LYRICS AND VOCABLULARY

A report by The Trinity Mirror data group on word usage by songwriters states that, over
her first three albums, Laura Marling employed some 1200 different words. She used the pronoun 'I' 337 times,
and the pronoun 'you' 185 times. (From 4 September article by Karen Jordan in
Get Reading)

BECK'S SONGREADER

Beck's Song Reader, previously released exclusively as an illustrated book of sheet music, is
now available on CD, MP3, and vinyl.
All vinyl orders receive an instant mp3 download of the album upon purchase. The album includes newly-recorded versions of all 20 songs
from the original book by a variety of performers including Laura Marling, Jack White, Beck himself, and Norah Jones. Marling
performs the song Sorry (track #10).

MARY STUART

Marling spoke to Laura Barton of NEWSWEEK about writing original music for Robert Icke's production of Friedrich Schiller's MARY STUART. She said that Icke was the first
person ever to ask her to rewrite her lyrics. "I sent him the demo and the final draft of the lyrics, she said, "or what
I thought would be the final draft, and he sent a really amazing critique of what he felt was relevant and what he felt wasn't drawn
from the play and couldn't be placed there."

Actors Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams alternated in the roles of Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart at the
Almeida Theatre in London. Which actor played which role
was decided by the toss of a coin before each performance.

REVERSAL OF THE MUSE

"It occurred to me that in ten year of making records, I had only come across two female engineers working in studios. Starting
from my experience of being a woman I began to ask myself what difference it might have made had I had more women around, if any. I
wanted to know why progress has been so slow in this area and what effect it would have on music."
---- Laura Marling

In Episode 4 of
REVERSAL OF THE MUSE, Marling talks about her now ended five
album deal with Virgin Records.
"I was signed to a pretty terrible deal," Marling tells former Epic Records executive Amanda Ghost. "My dad did my contract because
I didn't have a manager then. He used his lawyer from the '70s and we got the most incredibly bad deal which we couldn't get out of
for five albums. And to be fair, I wasn't bothered, they never bothered me and I never bothered them."

ISLE OF NOISES

Isle Of Noises: Conversations With Great British Songwriters by Daniel Rachel, which is available
from Amazon in a Kindle Edition and in hardcover, includes extensive conversation with Laura Marling. Asked if she
records 'little ideas' and then builds from them Marling said: "No, it's all from memory. I'm a complete technophobe.
Sometimes if I finish a song very quickly then I write it down because I'll definitely forget it the next day. But I can't
read or write music so I do write down chords and stuff.". And she says she can't just sit down and write
a song just because she wants to. "I've tried," she says, "and it's awful, awful, awful,
awful." Rachel is himself a songwriter who has released three solo albums, the most recent being
A Taste of Money (2006).

This site is not affiliated in any way with Laura Marling or her management.

Semper Femina is among the 22 albums shortlisted for the 2018 IMPALA European Album Of The Year Award. This award was launched in 2011 to
mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of IMPALA, which represents European independent labels. Nominated albums were required to have
been released on a European independent label in 2017. Music Week has published the full shortlist. Last year, the award was won by Agnes Obel.

Writing for NME,
Leonie Cooper called Marling Britain's most important songwriter. On the tenth anniversary of the release of
ALAS I CANNOT SWIM, Cooper said of Marling's debut album: "It wasn’t just her age and precociousness that made people take notice;
it was the moody experimentalism that she brought to the classic sound of British folk music. In the wake of the ultra-laddish second
wave of Britpop...Laura Marling’s music offered a more intimate kind of emotional catharsis." And Cooper called SEMPER FEMINA
"... a bold record but one that’s every bit as left-of-centre as her debut, picking apart the way women see other women with sharp
intelligence and a burning fire."

Laura Marling's performance at St. Giles in the Field in London on 17 February as part of BRIT's Week was reviewed
for The Telegraph by Patrick Smith. "Alone with her guitar, her flowing white shirt matching her complexion, she laid
bare her gusty parables about solitude and self-realisation to the 200 fans genuflecting before her," said Smith. "Drawing mainly from Semper Femina,
she opened with Wild Fire, her Hampshire accent drifting into an American drawl, before
weaving through the dreamy waltz of The Valley and
the melancholic Next Time, her eyes fixated on the balcony above." (Marling was nominated for a
Brit Award in the category British Female Solo Artist. Dua Lipa won in that category.)

"Most mentions of Semper Femina note that singer-songwriter Laura Marling addresses only women in its nine songs. It's
hard to tell if those women are friends or lovers, but Marling's sharp observations and plainspoken language render the ambiguity irrelevant.
The title comes from a line in Virgil's Aeneid, 'Varium et mutabile semper femina' (Fickle and changeable always is woman),
and in just about every song a doubtful narrator wrestles with a relationship at a crossroads."

Friedrich Schiller’s MARY STUART (which includes original music by Laura Marling), will move to
the Duke of York's Theatre in London’s West End this winter for performances from 15 January to 31 March. (TICKETS are now on sale.) Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams
will once again trade the roles of Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart, decided at each performance by the toss of a coin. MARY STUART will then
go on tour, visiting Theatre Royal Bath (4–14 April),
Salford Lowry (17–21 April), and Cambridge Arts Theatre (23–28 April).

Dear Alas I Cannot Swim,
I first met you in year 10 on a burnt CD, wrapped in coloured paper and handed to me, like a drug deal, in the aisle of the school
bus by my friend Melissa. Between us, Melissa and I had established something of a piracy ring of Myspace music downloads, YouTube
rips and Limewire files. We were the curators of our own secret music club, dedicated to scouring the internet via dial-up for new
and exciting artists. There was no band too obscure, no demo too rough, no download too painfully slow. Every few weeks we would return
from our crusades and wordlessly exchange handmade cases, with meticulously handwritten notes detailing the contents.

Marling stars alongside Tim Key,
Sophia Broido, and Will Hislop. in the short film REGULARS,
about an awkward café regular (Key) who has been dying to ask his favourite waitress (Marling)
a particular question. After its initial broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK on 24 November, the short will be available on demand on
All 4.

Season four of PEAKY BLINDERS (a crime family epic set in 1919
Birmingham, England centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps) began airing on BBC Two recently and all six episodes will be available on Netflix in the US
on 21 December. Laura Marling has three songs featured in the fourth season – a cover of Nick Cave's Red Right Hand, another mystery cover
and one of her own originals. "Being an outlaw is not about being loud," composer Antony Genn told Rhian Daley of NME. "Being an outlaw is
about being powerful. When Laura Marling opens her mouth and sings, it’s like when people say, 'This person is the real deal.'"

Marling has added her name to an open letter calling for the extension of shared parental pay benefits to the self-employed in the UK.
Parental Pay Equality, the group behind the action, was begun
by sound engineer Olga FitzRoy. Among other signatories are Coldplay, and Bond composer David Arnold. Leaders of entertainment unions BECTU,
and the Musicians Union and Equity have also signed.

"The second episode of "Damnation" pivots on a striking scene: A group of shabby farmers walk into a small Iowa town,
carrying handmade signs and chanting slogans. The signs demand unity, a living wage, a compassionate economy: "UNITED WE STAND,"
"GROW YOUR OWN FOOD," "WE NEED FAIR PRICES." It's a showstopping set piece, set to Laura Marling's "Devil's Spoke," a similarly
timeless banjo number that reminds the listener, "all of this can be broken."

Hungarian writer-director Ildikó Enyedi's latest film,
ON BODY AND SOUL (Testrol és lélekrol), is a tale of
two loners, Endre (Géza Morcsányi)and Mária (Alexandra Borbély),
living on the outskirts of Budapest, who fall in love. In the film, Laura Marling's 'What He Wrote' is the one tune Mária plays on repeat.
The movie won the Golden Bear Award at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival.

Michael Roffman and Heather Kaplan, writing for CoS, pointed out an interesting co-incidence. Marling sang the line "I hope
we meet again" during her performance at Lynch's Festival of Disruption. That line is the last thing Special Agent Dale Cooper says to his friends
near the end of “Part 17” of TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN. Marling performed at David Lynch's 2017 Festival of Disruption, 14 and 15 October at The Theatre
at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. Among others in the music lineup were Bon Iver, The Kills, Sharon Van Etten, and Moby.
There were also screenings of Lynch films (including some rare shorts). On 7 October, Marling spoke with New Yorker staff writer
John Seabrook
and performed live at the 2017
New Yorker Festival,
at the Gramercy Theatre in New York.

Laura designed an individual sigil for each track on Semper Femina, and they are now available as metallic gold transfer tattoos
on Marling's official website. (A
sigil is a symbolic representation of the desired result of a magical incantation.)

Bernard Zuel reviewed Marling's 12 June performance at the
Sydney Opera House for the
Sydney Morning Herald, saying that "...the addition of the Topolski
sisters made for some stunning moments of choral power as well as giving the full Fleetwood Mac to Daisy, a b-side from 2015
which has become a live staple and luxuriates in its evocation of 'golden age' Christine McVie." And about Marling herself:

...it is still something of wonder to hear a storyteller with such mastery of tone and temper, word and imagery,
who can command a room without recourse to domination, who can tell you everything you need to know while saying almost nothing
through the show, and who can lift you with her as she rises.

In an interview with Katherine Gillespie of
Noisey Australia, Marling said that she hates being called a "female songwriter".
and said that her previous album, SHORT MOVIE, was a direct reaction to that label being applied to her. "I did quite a lot of work
to distant myself from the way I was portrayed in the media," Marling said. "I don't do fashion shoots; I don't wear makeup when
I have my photo taken. And for that reason, not many people want to take my photo. I try to keep a sense of ownership over my appearance."

"For more than 10 years, Marling has established herself as a
riveting antidote to the sometimes stagnant, sometimes commercialized world of modern folk. Lucky for us, her live show is just
as emotionally powerful as her studio work, if not more so. More Tuesday nights should be like this."

Laura Marling was a guest on THE STROMBO SHOW on CBC2. She discussed femininity in creativity, and performed four songs, including
Dolly Parton's "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?".

Laura Snapes reviewed Marling's show at The Dome in Brighton for
The Guardian. Here's part of her description of the show.

She [Marling] does a bit where everyone gets to present a new fact they've learned that day. It's pretty awkward, in keeping with
her enduring discomfort as a focal point (she mostly delivers her lines to the Dome's ornate ceiling). Enjoyably, she seems most
comfortable when things start going awry. Womanhood has clearly been on her mind – playing solo, she flubs "dress" as "breast" on Nouel,
and stops to laugh amid lyrics comparing a friend to Gustave Courbet's explicit painting L'Origine du monde. There are more mid-song
giggles. The band returns and she asks if anything fun happened backstage. "Actually yeah!" a Topolski blurts
[Emma and Tamsin Topolski are Marling's backuup singers], but declines to expand
at the risk of embarrassment. "And I was out here being sincere," Marling rues.

For Record Store Day 2017 a limited clear vinyl edition of Laura Marling: Live From Westminster was released. Marling's live performance at York Minster Cathedral
in October 2011 features songs from her first three albums. See Amazon for a tracklist.

"...the Origin Du Monde is an image that I've always found very powerful in relation to women, in the origin of the world
being this very graphic female genitalia. There was something to me about her that had the essence of that painting, rather than the literal
gaze that I was experiencing. So I was writing it, and I was aware that I was treading this line between sexual ambiguity and innocent
adoration. And they are not separate, they're the same. It's difficult to explain." she pauses, before adding with a wry smile, "but I
haven't seen her vagina, if that's what you're asking."

Richard Tester wrote for The Yorker about Marling's Q & A session at Goldsmiths, University of London on 13 February, and quoted
Marling's response to questions about the kind of literature she enjoys:

"I used to read a lot of fiction and I don't anymore, but I read a lot of poetry. So Gothic Romantic literature
used to play quite a big part in my vocabulary of emotional experience. Now that I have my own emotional experiences, many of them,
I like drawing on them and delving into poetry more, as well as literary fictional/fantasy."